Dungeons

Diablo 4 has 115 dungeons that pay into the Codex of Power, and all of them use the same small vocabulary of chores. You free prisoners, you gather Animus from carriers and pour it into an urn, you carry a statue or a Bloodstone back to a pedestal one at a time, you find a key or throw a lever, you smash a set of structures, or you simply kill everything in a named room. Our 105 dungeon walkthroughs describe those chores door by door, and this guide sorts them by the one the walkthrough puts first, because the objective decides how long a dungeon takes far more than its boss does.

Two facts frame the list. Our dungeon map names a final boss for 83 of the 115 dungeons and none for 32, so more than a quarter of them end on the last objective rather than a fight. And the Codex reward is dealt evenly: 20 dungeons hand out an aspect for each of the five classes and 15 pay an aspect anyone can use, with every first clear worth 30 Renown as well. Where a class's aspect sits is in the items guide; where the bosses recur is in the bosses guide.

Most dungeons chain two or three of these, so a page was filed under the first that applies in the order above. That order is deliberate: prisoners and Animus are the objectives that send you exploring, carrying and keys are the ones that send you back and forth, and destruction and slaughter are the ones you finish on the way to the boss.

Prisoners to free

Seventeen dungeons open with cages, and the count matters, because our pages give it: four in Witchwater, five in the Faceless Shrine and Buried Halls, six in Oblivion, seven in Dead Man's Dredge and Penitent Cairns. Luban's Rest inverts the idea with a timed event in which adventurers have to be kept alive rather than released.

Animus to collect

Eighteen dungeons run on Animus, the substance dropped by marked Animus Carriers and poured into an urn to open the way on. Our Prison of Caldeum page has the warning that applies to all of them: the drop is small and easy to miss, so look around after every carrier falls. Both capstone dungeons use it too, and are covered further down.

Something to carry back

Eighteen dungeons are about the walk. Ancient Statues, Stone Carvings, Bloodstones, Ancient Slabs and Mechanical Boxes all have to be found and brought to a pedestal, and the Shifting City page states the rule that makes these slow: you carry one at a time, so two statues mean two trips. Onyx Hold is the odd one, where the things carried back are corpses to their graves.

A key or a lever

Eleven dungeons are locked in the literal sense. The key is always on a named enemy, the Decayed Keymaster in the Sealed Archives, the Gate Keeper in the Defiled Catacombs, Adalgrim in the Tormented Ruins, or hidden in a room like the Sailors' Demise in the Vault of the Forsaken. Two swap the key for machinery: the Gate Winches of the Black Asylum and the Gate Controls of Kor Dragan Barracks.

Structures to destroy

Twenty dungeons ask you to break things, and the things come in sets of two or three: Skeletal Constructs in four of them, Wards of Eyes, Fallen Idols, Silken Spires, Seaborn Goddess statues, Blood Boils, Sacred Seals, Corpse Piles, Egg Clusters. These are the quickest doors in the game when the set is on your route and the slowest when one piece is hidden, which is what the walkthroughs are for.

Nothing but kills, or straight to the boss

Twenty-one dungeons ask for nothing you can carry. Seventeen of them string together named rooms to clear and named elites to kill, the Banes of Eridu, the High Inquisitors, the Bandit Captains, the Watchmen, before the boss room, and four have walkthroughs that go straight to the boss. These are the pages behind our Nightmare dungeon tier list's XP picks, because a dungeon with no fetching is a dungeon you can run in a straight line.

The five dungeons that are not in the Codex

Five pages sit outside the 115. The Cathedral of Light and the Fallen Temple are the two capstones, run at level 50 and 70 to open World Tiers 3 and 4; both are Animus dungeons underneath, the first ending in the High Council and The Curator, the second in a choice of trials and then Elias. Lair of the Despoiler and Mithering Descent are story dungeons, the first behind Tur Dulra and The Old Ways quest, the second inside Threads of Envy with no boss and 20 Renown. And the Hidden Camp is not a dungeon at all but a Diablo 3 easter egg in Kehjistan's Forgotten Overlook.

Where our list and the master table part ways

Ten of the 115 dungeons in the master table have no walkthrough of their own yet: Forsaken Quarry, Kor Valar Ramparts and Mercy's Reach in the Fractured Peaks, Ancient Reservoir and Steadfast Barracks in Hawezar, Conclave and Putrid Aquifer in Kehjistan, and Demon's Wake, Garan Hold and Hive in Scosglen. Their aspects are still covered on the aspect list, and Conclave is described alongside the Corrupted Grotto as another Kehjistan dungeon with no boss. Two dungeons run the other way, present on our pages but missing from the table: Lair of the Despoiler and Mithering Descent, both story dungeons. Five names differ by a letter between the table and the page, Defiled Catacomb or Catacombs, Endless Gate or Gates, Maugan's Work or Works, Shadow or Shadowed Plunge, Tomb or Tombs of the Saints, and the tables above use the page's spelling.

Running them again: Nightmare dungeons

Once World Tier 3 is open, a Nightmare Sigil turns any of these into a Nightmare dungeon with affixes and glyph XP, and the objective type is what our tier list is really ranking. Its six XP picks, Aldurwood, Blind Burrows, Champion's Demise, Guulrahn Canals, Raethwind Wilds, then Sunken Ruins, are kill-only or single-carry dungeons; its five glyph picks, Cultist Refuge, Lost Archives, Maugan's Works, Maulwood and Witchwater, are longer runs where the extra rooms are the point. The farming guide adds the reset trick and the rule of thumb to run sigils three levels above your own, and the dungeon reset page covers the normal-world version.

Which dungeon to run first is a regional question: the regions guide shows how the 115 split across the five zones, and the Diablo 4 hub explains why the Codex you fill here is one of the few things a new character inherits.

Frequently asked questions

How many dungeons in Diablo 4 have no boss?

32 of the 115 in our master table end on the last objective instead of a boss fight. Several of those, like Anica's Claim and Caldera Gate, do have a final elite on our walkthrough that the table does not count as a boss.

Do all dungeons give the same Renown?

Every walkthrough that states it says 30 Renown for the first clear, plus the Codex aspect. Mithering Descent, a story dungeon outside the Codex, pays 20.

Which dungeons need a stronghold cleared first?

Our pages name Cultist Refuge inside Nostrava, Crumbling Hekma inside Omath's Redoubt, Sepulcher of the Forsworn via Altar of Ruin, Feral's Den and Twisted Hollow behind Moordaine Lodge, Underroot and Lair of the Despoiler behind Tur Dulra, Oblivion behind Eriman's Pyre, and Anica's Claim after Malnok.